Field biostimulation experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Integrated Field Research Challenge (IFRC) site in Rifle, Colorado, have demonstrated that uranium concentrations in groundwater can be decreased to levels below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) drinking water standard (0.126 µM).During successive summer experiments -referred to as "Winchester" (2007) and "Big Rusty" (2008) -acetate was added to the aquifer to stimulate the activity of indigenous dissimilatory metalreducing bacteria capable of reductively immobilizing uranium. The two experiments differed in the length of injection (31 vs. 110 days), the maximum concentration of acetate (5 vs. 30 mM), and the extent to which iron reduction ("Winchester") or sulfate reduction ("Big Rusty") was the predominant metabolic process. In both cases, rapid removal of U(VI) from groundwater occurred at calcium concentrations (6 mM) and carbonate alkalinities (8 meq/L) where Ca-UO 2 -CO 3 ternary complexes constitute >90% of uranyl species in groundwater. Complete consumption of acetate and increased alkalinity (>30 meq/L) accompanying the onset of sulfate reduction corresponded to temporary increases in U(VI); however, by increasing acetate concentrations in excess of available sulfate (10 mM), low U(VI) concentrations (0.1-0.05 µM) were achieved for extended periods of time (>140 days). Uniform delivery of acetate during "Big Rusty" was impeded due to decreases in injection well permeability, likely resulting from biomass accumulation and carbonate and sulfide mineral precipitation. Such decreases were not observed during the short-duration "Winchester" experiment. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) analysis of 16S rRNA genes demonstrated that Geobacter sp. and Geobacter-like strains dominated the groundwater community profile during iron reduction, with 13 C stable isotope probing (SIP) results confirming these strains were actively utilizing acetate to replicate their genome during the period of optimal U(VI) removal. Gene transcript levels during "Big Rusty" were quantified for Geobacter-specific citrate synthase (gltA), with ongoing transcription during sulfate reduction indicating that members of the Geobacteraceae were still active and likely contributing to U(VI) removal. The persistence of reducible Fe(III) in sediments recovered from an area of prolonged (110-day) sulfate reduction is consistent with this conclusion. These results indicate that acetate availability and its ability to sustain the activity of iron-and uranyl-respiring Geobacter strains during sulfate reduction exerts a primary control on optimized U(VI) removal from groundwater at the Rifle IFRC site over extended time scales (>50 days).

A new characterization approach is employed in this study that enables the measurement of the surface area of each reactive mineral located within the connected pore network of a sandstone from a carbon sequestration pilot site in Cranfield, Mississippi. The mineral distribution is measured in 2D by chemical mapping using Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy-Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM-EDX) coupled with an image segmentation technique. The pore structure is mapped at high resolution using a pixel contrast thresholding technique applied to 2D Backscattered Electron Microscopy (BSE-SEM) images. After merging the mineral distribution and porosity maps, the accessibilities of each mineral present in the rock sample are quantified. These quantifications require characterizing in advance the connected pore network in the merged maps, which is done considering the permeability of chlorite measured at the nano-scale in three dimensions by Focus Ion BeamScanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM). The accessible surface area of each reactive mineral is finally determined by multiplying the fraction of each reactive mineral next to the connected pore network, measured in 2D, with the surface area of the connected pore network in the rock, which is measured in 3D from X-ray based micro tomography (μ-CT) images and subsequently refined with a correction factor that accounts for the missing pore connectivity. This is necessary since μ-CT voxel resolution (880 nm) is lower than the pixel resolution achieved with BSE-SEM (330 nm). The accessible surface areas of the reactive minerals present in the sandstone rock can be used to accurately scale the rate constants for quantitative prediction and ultimately control of CO 2 injection in the subsurface at the Cranfield pilot site.

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[1] Weathering of rocks as a result of exposure to water and the atmosphere can cause significant changes in their chemistry and porosity. In low-porosity rocks, such as basalts, changes in porosity, resulting from chemical weathering, are likely to modify the rock's effective diffusivity and permeability, affecting the rate of solute transport and thus potentially the rate of overall weathering to the extent that transport is the rate limiting step. Changes in total porosity as a result of mineral dissolution and precipitation have typically been used to calculate effective diffusion coefficients through Archie's law for reactive transport simulations of chemical weathering, but this approach fails to account for unconnected porosity that does not contribute to transport. In this study, we combine synchrotron X-ray microcomputed tomography (mCT) and laboratory and numerical diffusion experiments to examine changes in both total and effective porosity and effective diffusion coefficients across a weathering interface in a weathered basalt clast from Costa Rica. The mCT data indicate that below a critical value of $9%, the porosity is largely unconnected in the basalt clast. The mCT data were further used to construct a numerical pore network model to determine upscaled, effective diffusivities as a function of total porosity (ranging from 3 to 30%) for comparison with diffusivities determined in laboratory tracer experiments. By using effective porosity as the scaling parameter and accounting for critical porosity, a model is developed that accurately predicts continuum-scale effective diffusivities across the weathering interface of the basalt clast.

The readsorption of ferrous ions produced by the abiotic and microbially-mediated reductive dissolution of iron oxy-hydroxides drives a series of transformations of the host minerals. To further understand the mechanisms by which these transformations occur and their kinetics within a microporous flow environment, flow-through experiments were conducted in which capillary tubes packed with ferrihydrite-coated glass spheres were injected with inorganic Fe(II) solutions under circumneutral pH conditions at 25ºC. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction was used to identify the secondary phase(s) formed and to provide data for quantitative kinetic analysis. At concentrations at and above 1.8 mM Fe(II) in the injection solution, magnetite was the only secondary phase formed (no intermediates were detected), with complete transformation following a nonlinear rate law requiring 28 hours and 150 hours of reaction at 18 and 1.8 mM Fe(II), respectively. However, when the injection solution consisted of 0.36 mM Fe(II), goethite was the predominant reaction product and formed much more slowly according to a linear rate law, while only minor magnetite was formed. When the rates are normalized based on the time to react half of the ferrihydrite on a reduced time plot, it is apparent that the 1.8 mM and 18 mM input Fe(II) experiments can be described by the same reaction mechanism, while the 0.36 input Fe(II) experiment is distinct. The analysis of the transformation kinetics suggest that the transformations involved an electron transfer reaction between the aqueous as well as sorbed Fe(II) and ferrihydrite acting as a semiconductor, rather than a simple dissolution and recrystallization mechanism. A transformation mechanism involving sorbed inner sphere Fe(II) alone is not supported, since the essentially equal coverage of sorption sites in the 18 mM and 1.8 mM Fe(II) injections cannot explain the difference in the transformation rates observed.

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The upscaling of calcite precipitation rates in porous media from the pore (micron) to continuum (centimeter) scale is evaluated with an integrated experimental and modeling approach. Experiments using cylindrical cores packed with glass beads and calcite (Iceland spar) crystals were injected over a period of 28 days with a supersaturated mixture of CaCl 2 and NaHCO 3 to induce calcite growth. Bulk rates of precipitation based on the change in aqueous chemistry over the length of the column are compared with spatially resolved determinations of carbonate precipitation using X-ray synchrotron microtomographic imaging at the micron scale. These data are supplemented by continuously-stirred reactor experiments using the same calcite seed material so as to minimize differences in the effects of reactive site density of the seed material, and to evaluate the rate of precipitation in the absence of transport or "porous medium" effects. Calcite precipitation rates determined in the stirred flowthrough reactor in this study are considerably slower than rates determined at similar supersaturation in unseeded batch experiments by Tang et al. [2008a], although these rates are compatible with those reported in Nehrke et al. [2007] for precipitation on Iceland spar when the same normalization to reactive surface area is used. The nearly linear dependence of the rates on supersaturation cannot be attributed to a diffusion control in the case of the stirred reactors and is likely the result of multi-sourced spiral growth.Integrated precipitation rates based on column effluent chemistry from a higher supersaturation experiment are in good agreement with determinations of total carbonate precipitated based on determination of pre-and post-experiment mass in the column using X-ray microtomography. Using the rates of precipitation determined in the well-stirred flowthrough reactors, it is possible to match the spatially-resolved microtomographic and aqueous data with a coarser resolution continuum model using volume-averaged flow and reactive surface area if the generation of new reactive surface area is accounted for. A nucleation or surface roughening event, which is most pronounced within two millimeters of the column inlet where the supersaturation is highest, is recorded by both BET analysis, which indicates an increase in specific surface area from 0.012 m 2 •g -1 to a value of 0.21 m 2 •g -1 for neoformed calcium carbonate, and by X-ray microtomography. The best fit of the column X-ray microtomography data is provided by simulating calcite precipitation either as a single nearly linear rate for multi-sourced spiral growth, or as two parallel rates that include the spiral growth model and a 2D heterogeneous nucleation model modified by a partial diffusion control, although nucleation needs to be relatively minor on a mass basis in order to match the data. The combined experiments and modeling indicate that it is possible to develop upscaled quantitative models for porous media reactivity, but changes in such propert...

The rates of mineral dissolution reactions in porous media are difficult to predict, in part because of a lack of understanding of mineral reactive surface area in natural porous media. Common estimates of mineral reactive surface area used in reactive transport models for porous media are typically ad hoc and often based on average grain size, increased to account for surface roughness or decreased by several orders of magnitude to account for reduced surface reactivity of field as opposed to laboratory samples. In this study, accessible mineral surface areas are determined for a sample from the reservoir formation at the Nagaoka pilot CO2 injection site (Japan) using a multi-scale image analysis based on synchrotron Xray microCT, SEMQEMSCAN, XRD, SANS, and FIB-SEM. This analysis not only accounts for accessibility of mineral surfaces to macro-pores, but also accessibility through connected micro-pores in smectite, the most abundant clay mineral in this sample. While the imaging analysis reveals that most of the micro-and macro-pores are well connected, some pore regions are unconnected and thus inaccessible to fluid flow and diffusion. To evaluate whether mineral accessible surface area accurately reflects reactive surface area a flow-through core experiment is performed and modeled at the continuum scale. The core experiment is performed under conditions replicating the pilot site and the evolution of effluent solutes in the aqueous phase is tracked.Various reactive surface area models are evaluated for their ability to capture the observed effluent chemistry, beginning with parameter values determined as a best fit to a disaggregated sediment experiment (Beckingham et al., 2016) described previously.Simulations that assume that all mineral surfaces are accessible (as in the disaggregated sediment experiment) over-predict the observed mineral reaction rates, suggesting that a reduction of RSA by a factor of 10-20 is required to match the core flood experimental data. While the fit of the effluent chemistry (and inferred mineral dissolution rates) greatly improve when the pore-accessible mineral surface areas are used, it was also necessary to include highly reactive glass phases to match the experimental observations, in agreement with conclusions from the disaggregated sediment experiment. It is hypothesized here that the 10-20 reduction in reactive surface areas based on the limited pore accessibility of reactive phases in core flood experiment may be reasonable for poorly sorted and cemented sediments like those at the Nagaoka site, although this reflects pore rather than larger scale heterogeneity.